Brisbane 2011: Life-cycle costs approach
What is the life-cycle cost approach and how can you collect and analyse costs against service levels?
WASHCost Director Catarina Fonseca, and Dr. Mekala Snehalatha, Country coordinator WASHCost India, provided a training on life-cycle costs at the WASH Conference 2011: "Towards sustainability in water, sanitation and hygiene" http://www.watercentre.org/wash2011, in Brisbane, Australia, 16 – 20 May 2011.
The training covered the life-cycle cost approach and the steps and tools for applying the approach.
Info Sheet Introduction
This sheet gives an overview of what the WASH Services that Last training entails.
Info sheet introduction FINAL2 PDF.pdf (524.1 kB)
Module 1. Introduction: from systems to services
People expect water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services to last. However, despite increasing WASH coverage, there is also evidence of high rates of system failure and ‘slippage’, where some users and communities fall back to a lower level of service or have to revert to unsafe and unreliable facilities or practices.
Module 3. Practical application: tools and methods
One of the key components of ensuring effective and sustained water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services is life-cycle costing. That means considering all the costs – from capital investment to maintenance, minor and major repairs, direct and indirect support costs and the costs of capital for asset replacement. By costing services rather than infrastructure alone, the life-cycle cost approach is about recognising the importance of post-construction costs which must be covered in order for a service to be maintained over time.
